One in Eight Voter Registrations Is Invalid

Just as the country gets ready for the awesome quadrennial tradition of choosing the leader of the free world, the new report from Pew Research Center has some bad voting-related news: our voter registrations rolls are't in good shape.

Just as the country gets ready for the awesome quadrennial tradition of choosing the leader of the free world, the new report from Pew Center on the StatesPew Research Center has some bad voting-related news: our voter registrations rolls are't in good shape. While it's long been known that voter participation is usually low in the U.S. (one in four Americans not registered), it's the approximately 24 million active voter registrations that are invalid that caught our attention.

There are several reasons that 12.5 percent of all voter registrations are null and void. 2.8 million voters are registered in multiple states, another 12 million have inaccurate addresses, and about 1.8 million are, well, dead. As The New York Times highlights, Pew's report shows that the U.S.'s decentralized and papered voter registration system needs reform. Unfortunately, that reform is likely to stay tied up in partisanship. "It’s not clear that it has a uniform partisan effect,” one professor told that paper, adding “it is now pretty clear that Democrats want to enact measures that make voter registration easier, and Republicans fear that would be an invitation to fraud.”

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.